Living Today: Issues of modern living

The 2002 Statistical Abstract by the U.S. Census shows Americans nearly doubled their recycling of trash over the past decade.

"Thirty percent of the residential and commercial waste generated in municipal collections was recovered in 2000, compared to 16 percent 10 years earlier," Lars Johanson, technical coordinator of the Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2002, says in a statement.

Of the 25 largest metro areas in Census 2000, Phoenix-Mesa, Ariz., had the highest percentage of workers who carpooled to work -- 15 percent -- followed closely by Los Angeles-Riverside-Orange County, Calif.

The states with the highest percentage of federally owned land in 2000 were: Nevada with 83 percent, Utah with 65 percent and Idaho with 63 percent.

NEW CATHOLIC COLLEGE

On a remote 750-acre site near the Everglades, Fla., Ave Maria University, the nation's first new Roman Catholic university in four decades, is about to be built.

The founder of Ave Maria, Tom Monaghan, better known as the founder of Domino's Pizza, has big plans including a Division I football team; three golf courses -- including one for donors only -- and a new town, Ave Maria, with a commercial center joining the campus, The New York Times reports.

Ave Maria will be more conservative than most of the nation's 235 Catholic colleges and universities. It will be independent of the church and have no coed dorms and no gay-support groups.

The permanent campus, expected to open in 2006 with about 600 students and grow to 5,000, will be built on land donated by real estate developers who saw the university as an attractive amenity for the town it was planning.

WORK NET ACCESS POPULAR

Businesses often clamp down on personal use of the Internet at work, citing concerns about productivity, but a study finds workers more than make up for it at home.

"The survey suggests companies should accept some personal use of the Internet at work as not only inevitable, but as positive to the organization," Roland Rust, director of the Center for e-Service at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business in College Park, Md., says in a statement.

Fully 85 percent of survey participants with Web access at work admitted using the Internet on the job for personal purposes -- often to take advantage of high-speed Internet access.

However, workers spend more time -- an average of 5.9 hours per week -- using the Internet at home, for work-related purposes.

VALENTINE'S DAY TEDDY BEARS

What kind of man sends a teddy bear for Valentine's Day? A confident one, according to an online survey by the Vermont Teddy Bear Co.

The survey finds more than 85 percent of the their customers for Valentine's Day holiday are adult men.

"It's not always easy to express your feelings, but sending your sweetheart a 'Horny Devil' bear, for example, can help someone get right to the point. And it certainly reflects a confident personality," Irene Steiner, vice president of Vermont Teddy Bears, says in a statement.

The "Don Juan" and "Red Hot Lover" bears outsell more traditional bears like the "Sweetheart" and "Be Mine" bears but the "Get Lucky" bear did well also.

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